Monday, November 1, 2010

Why blog?

I was recently asked by a fellow DeMolay Executive Officer: "Why is PA DeMolay blogging?"

What he really wanted to know was: "Where is the value for the time invested?" and "Should I do it, too?"

Well, first of all, blogging statistics are staggering.

A September 2010 study by eMarketer on the skyrocketing growth of blogging suggests that blogging is becoming very important to users who are looking for unfiltered opinions, product reviews, and up-to-date content. The study says that by 2014 more than 150 million Americans, or 60 percent of the U. S. Internet population will be regular blog participants. WordPress.com alone hosts more than 11.4 million blogs, publishing about 350,000 new posts, daily, and receiving an average of 400,000 comments, daily.

That's a lot of on-line "conversation" and while it is something that requires a regular and reliable time commitment, it is a valuable, and necessary communications tool in today's social media world.

Blogging, for organizations in general, can help build brand awareness, increase website traffic, develop better relations with members and friends, and provide an easy way for non-technical people, (like me!) to change content regularly on a website.

PA DeMolay is lucky to have "Dad" Seth Anthony who likes to do this-- I enjoy it, too, occasionally, but the pressure of doing it on a regular schedule would probably wear me down. "Dad" Anthony, however, seems to thrive on it, and never has trouble coming up with something of interest.

Our goal is to write posts that are relevant to DeMolay leaders, both young and old. Being relevant isn't just writing about how to run a DeMolay Chapter. Often it involves writing about the things that we think are important to young men and leaders who work with young men. Sometimes the topics are thoughtful and meaningful; sometimes they are downright silly. But that's what working with DeMolays is all about-- finding the right balance between ritual and athletics, fund-raising and social time, leadership and followership, philosophy and fun.

So, I come back to the big question: IS this blog worth the time we spend on it? It is hard to quantify the answer, because, after ten months of blogging with 124 posts we don't have a huge number of official "followers," (58) and we don't get too many written comments (26) by way of the blog, yet. But we do get emails and phone calls, and have received some great suggestions for future blog topics.

If you find that reading this blog has been interesting, or helpful, or challenging, or, at least, amusing, drop us a note and let us know. You can write via the blog comments, or you can send an email to me, or to Seth at any address you may have for us, or you can use webmaster@pademolay.org; whatever is most convenient for you!

1 comment:

My vote is to keep blogging! I love it - I find it refreshing and have had several times where after reading the blog entry I either find myself excited and encouraged to do something more! I check in on a regular basis to see what is the hot topic at that moment of blog entries! Thanks for doing this!